Totus Tuus

Those of you who have been reading along thus far -- and I think I can count you on the thumbs of one or two hands, or maybe of one foot -- have seen me range from the naughty-joke -telling (I'm still blushing about that one), to one-time composer of shallow fiction and verse, political firebrand, amateur linguist/historian/genealogist, and so on. Next facet now.

I mentioned once recently another category I set up when I began this blog, "Totus tuus", but had yet (until now) to write something in. Totus tuus was Pope John Paul II's papal motto, and can be translated as "Yours in All Things", or "Completely Yours" -- an admirable, yet seemingly impossible, total surrender of everything, to the Lord our God. Right?

This tradition of total surrender to God's will is hardly unique to Catholicism, however, with its many professed orders of poverty-pledged monks and nuns, or even to Christianity. Witness Buddhism's wandering mendicants; and note also how "islam" in Arabic means "surrender" (and thus, in theory, a "muslim" is "someone who has totally submitted him/herself to the will of Allah/God").

The character Yoda asserts in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back: "Luminous beings are we, ...not this crude matter." Indeed; it can be demonstrated easily that we are most certainly not created for this world, that we truly are here very briefly, and then move on. Thus asceticism is in fact being true to one's ultimate self as transient non-material by keeping our most fundamental focus off this transitory world of "crude matter".

(Let me stress, though, that this does not absolve or abrogate us of our absolute responsibility to this world while we are here. "Take only pictures and leave only footprints" is good stewardship, as advocated by, for instance, Leave No Trace. Leave it as your found it. Further, we need to improve so much of this world that we've been heretofore ruining: leave it better than you found it. And not just in terms of pollution, induced extinctions, etc.; there's also the crucial matter of social and cultural pollution and degradation. This full-service stewardship is the subject of another series of blogs, later on; buddy Spartacus just recently sent me some intriguing information I want to read up on and pass along.)

The above paragraphs are simply the background to the Why of my blog-category "Totus Tuus". Under that header, I plan to reflect on spirituality, particularly traditional/orthodox (Latin) Catholic spirituality and mysticism. A main thrust is a determined effort to help clear up some gross misunderstandings about the Catholic Church, and counter some of the attacks the Church faces -- with the understanding that (unless stated otherwise) this comes from an aging child who is not a saint, is far from perfect, quite flawed in many ways -- and yet who feels, even this late in life, the same call that brought John to the desert, Francis into the monastery, and Paul and Peter to share the good news, unheedful of personal cost.

More later; I'm not cloistered yet... so I need to go out and get some more pants and frozen dinners.